


Ad Infinitum

by fits_in_frames



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-13
Updated: 2007-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1549838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fits_in_frames/pseuds/fits_in_frames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean looks over at the girl sleeping in the front seat next to him. <i>No,</i> he reminds himself, hearing her voice in his head, <i>not a girl, a young lady. C'mon Uncle Dean.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad Infinitum

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through "Hunted".

Dean looks over at the girl sleeping in the front seat next to him. _No_ , he reminds himself, hearing her voice in his head, _not a girl, a young lady. C'mon Uncle Dean._ Kate is beautiful when she sleeps, the same way her father used to be, before he-- Dean snaps back to reality when he almost runs a red light. He remembers a time when that wouldn't faze him, but Kate has her permit now and he'll be damned if she ends up driving like him, too. The sudden jolt of the car stirs her from her sleep. She stretches.

"What time is it?" she yawns.

"Four," he says.

"How much further?"

"We're just outside Flagstaff," he says, peering out the window, "so, an hour? Maybe less."

She nods, pulls her knees to her chest. She reaches for the radio knob, spinning it until she lands on a Black Sabbath song. She smiles.

"That's my girl," he says, tapping out the rhythm on the steering wheel.

For the next few minutes, the inside of the car is quiet, save for the rumble of the engine (it's always been a comforting sound, still is) and the strains of Ozzy Osbourne, Cream, the Doors. When a commercial break comes up, she asks, "Uncle Dean?"

He raises an eyebrow, glances at her while keeping his eyes on the road.

"Tell me about my dad."

Something in the bottom of his stomach gives out. He clears his throat. "Kate, I told you--"

"You told me three years ago to ask you another time. So I'm asking now."

He sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, glances out the window. "Fine, fine, what do you want to know?"

"Everything," she says, and drops her feet back to the floor.

He thinks for a minute, gathering memories he's had buried for fifteen years. "Okay," he says, "everything.

"Your dad was four years younger than me. There was a fire in our house when he was a baby and I carried him outside. I kept him safe from then on, until he went to college."

"College? For what?"

"Pre-law."

"My dad was a lawyer?"

"Well, not quite. Before he finished, our dad--your grandfather--went missing, so I asked him to come with me to find him."

"Did you?"

Dean snorts. "No, actually, he found us. And died pretty soon after. And that was when Sam joined the army."

"The army?"

"Yeah," Dean says. He's been practicing this speech to his niece since she first asked him about Sammy when she was just eight years old. It's taken him this long to perfect it. "He joined the army after Dad died. He said he needed to get his frustrations out, y'know? Anyway, he was stationed in Tulsa, so I guess that's how he met your mom." He can still see Kate's mother--Meredith? was that her name?--standing in the hallway outside his apartment, soaked to the bone, with an infant in her arms, can still hear her say, _does sam winchester live here_ , can still feel her hands on his face when she said goodbye, leaving him with a crying baby and a head bursting with questions. He can still recite, word for word, her obituary, which appeared two weeks later. He had called the police in Tulsa: they said it was sleeping pills. He'd been tempted to go see for himself, but then Kate was crying in the next room, and he forgot everything but her.

"Uncle Dean? You okay?" Something in her voice sounds exactly like Sam.

"Yeah," he says, heart racing, "yeah, sorry. Drifted off for a second. Where was I?"

"You were saying how my dad was stationed in Tulsa."

"Right, right," Dean says. "Well, the last I heard from him, he was being sent off to the Middle East. Israel, I think. Anyway, he never made it." He swallows the guilt in the back of his throat, and continues. "Their transport was hit by a missile. Everyone onboard died." He pulls up to a red light, and looks over at her. The outline of her jaw in the glow of the streetlight is just like Sam's when he was trying not to cry. "You okay?"

She turns to him, hair flying into her face. "Why are you lying to me?"

"I'm not," he snaps at her, trying to will away the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Yes you are," she snaps back. "If my dad was in the army, you'd have pictures of him in uniform and a flag in the apartment."

"Look," he says, suppressing the frantic feeling that's bubbling up in his chest, "when your dad died, I was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. I couldn't exactly be all buddy-buddy with him, and I certainly couldn't claim his damn flag. I don't know who has it."

"Oh," she says.

"Anything else?" he says, trying to sound angry rather than scared.

She looks out the window, brushes hair out of her eyes. "No."

He turns his focus back to the road, feels the car rumble beneath him, and remembers. _The smell of the warehouse, like rotted fish and fresh paper. The sound of Sam's breathing behind him. Breaking Sam's wrists and bashing his head against the floor. The sheer terror when Andy and the girl he presumed to be Ava and a handful of others approached him. The touch of Sam's hand on his back, the puppy-look in his eyes, the demonic babble that spewed out of his mouth. The clink of empty clips on the tile floor when he shot the others. Sam squirming under the heel of his boot, begging to be spared. The words_ i'm sorry dad _coming out of his mouth, the lump in his throat that prevented him from saying anything more. The involuntary hand that went over his eyes when he pulled the trigger, the thud of Sam's head against the floor. The echoes of his gun falling, his boots pounding, his own retching against the night air, the sharp sting of acid in his nose._

He blinks. There's a booth ahead. They're here. He shakes Kate awake and pays the guy. She looks around like a lost puppy. Her profile is so much like Sam's these days. It scares him sometimes. "We here?"

"Yeah," he says, and puts the car in park.

She yawns and rubs at her eyes. She practically falls out of the car, and follows her uncle to the trunk. He opens it, propping up the cover with a crowbar. She changes her shoes and checks her flashlight. He's all ready to go.

"C'mon," he says, "we can see the sunrise if we hurry."

They hike for twenty minutes until they finally get to a place where there's any kind of view. And goddamn, what a view. It almost feels like infinity, standing here with his niece, watching the thin pink line of the horizon. Kate shivers, and he's suddenly glad he broke out the leather jacket for the first time in years as he drapes it over her shoulders, and then sits, cross-legged in the dust.

"Always wanted to come here with your dad," he says absently. "I told him we should, but he had other things on his mind." He remembers that conversation, remembers the bitter taste in his mouth when he said _i might have to kill you sammy_ , remembers the absolute hatred in Sam's eyes. He glances up at Kate as she pulls the jacket tighter around herself, closes her eyes and nods along to the song in her head. He smiles to himself and, for just a second, when she gasps at the sight of the sun peeking over the tops of the plateaus around them, he forgets that Sam isn't here with him.


End file.
